Sifry on the Attention Economy

Dave Sifry of Technorati is speaking on The Economy of Attention. What are
the rules that guide the attention economy and how are they different than
the rules we're used to in the real economy. Attention is about time
directed to a purpose by people.

Most economic models focus on what is scarce in the system. Economic
systems aren't only defined by what is scarce, but it's a pretty good tool
to find the seams in the fabric of the economy.

In the attention economy, computing power, storage, network bandwidth, and
even money aren't scarce. Time is what even people like Bill Gates don't
have enough of. We have a finite supply. What else is scare? Not
information. Social connections to people are hard to scale.

We can't create time and we can't hoard it. Its a perishable item.
Aggregating attention artifacts (where I spend my time, on what activities,
and for what purpose) is valuable. Yahoo! and Google value their
clickstreams because it gives them insight. Create attention data is
easy. Just live your life and the data can be capture. Explicit metadata
also adds value (tagging, as an example).

One of the most beautiful words in economics is productivity. This gives
you leverage over the raw inputs. Productivity grows an economy without
expending any new material. How can attention increase productivity?
Technorati was Dave's effort to help him save a lot of his own time by
giving him what he wanted when he wanted it.

How can this be applied?

Incorporate an understanding of time and people deeply into the design of
applications. He uses tech.memeorandum.org as an example.

Attention is both a currency and a perishable. Make it easy to
create and express attention.

Hyperlinks are votes of attention (Steve Gillmor disagrees with this,
I think).